Panel of the Week: 12/02/15

Marvel has been trying a lot of new things recently. They restarted all their series at #1 after an 8 month in-continuity gap to give readers a great jumping-on point for everything. As such, I've tried a lot of their new offerings. Some, like Karnak and Hercules, were surprisingly good. Others, like Totally Awesome Hulk, are ridiculous but have a good enough hook in there somewhere to make me want to see what happens next. And then there's the new volume of Daredevil, issue one of which was written by Charles Soule and pencilled by Ron Garney, in which the Man Without Fear is given a new enemy...

It's an Asian crime boss called Tenfingers. You know. Because he has ten fingers on each hand. Which really means he has twenty fingers, right, so wouldn't that be his name? I don't know. Apparently part of his thing is that his henchman are allowed to cut off one of their fingers and give it to him whenever they complete an assigned task. yeah, you read that write. They cut off their own fingers not as punishment but as reward. This is so mindnumbingly stupid I don't even want to type about it anymore, let alone read anymore about it.

The literal definition of "they can't all be winners" right here, folks.

Panel of the Week: 11/25/15

Sometimes there isn't anything all that outstanding that pops out in a particular week's batch of books. When that happens, it never hurts to just go with a classic action shot, and that's what I did with the week in question. The panel from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 4 #2, by Brian Michael Bendis and Valerio Schiti, featured below is just a such a panel.

Overlook the idea that both the Thing and Shadowcat are on the Guardians of the Galaxy instead of their usual teams, that's just the changing ways of Marvel now. Regardless of the team, there's nothing more timeless and classic in the comics world than the Thing, a cosmic enemy, and the clock hitting Clobberin' Time.

Panel of the Week: 11/18/15

You should never sip on another man's Kool-Aid. Especially when that man is the king of an advanced race who never speaks a word because the power of his voice could shatter the moon. Seems like the kind of thing that would fall under the "self-evident truths" category. But some people have a bit of a learning curve... which brings us to the panel of the week for November 18th:

The panel in question comes from Marvel's Uncanny Inhumans #2, written by Charles Soule, drawn by Steve McNiven. The character in question, scene above in black, is Black Bolt; Medusa, seen walking away in the top panel, is his former queen... and the dude in yellow and black is the Human Torch, who Black Bolt has just discovered is now dating Medusa. Since his voice isn't something he can really use, Black Bolt decides to let his gestures speak for him when it comes to his feelings on the subject...

Panel of the Week: 11/11/15

I have to be honest, being so far behind on the panels for this column sometimes makes it hard to remember why I picked certain ones over every other panel in all the comics I read that particular week. But in the case of November 11th, I have no such problem. Let me show you why.

The above panel from Darth Vader #12 (written by Kieron Gillen, drawn by Salvador Larocca) features the eponymous lead character disabling a rebel fighter just by Force-throwing his lightsaber through it.

Pretty badass, no?

Panel of the Week: 11/4/15

Gonna keep this one short and sweet as I don't have a lot of time; I'm between finishing up an all day binge of Jessica Jones on Netflix and waiting for the midseason finale of Walking Dead to start in a few minutes. Truly, we're living in the geek renaissance. Anyway, going back almost a full month now, the winner for best panel (or in this case, panels) of the week for the comics released on November 4th goes to the following sequence from Invincible Iron Man, written by Brian Michael Bendis (who wrote the Alias story Jessica Jones is based on, in a fun bit of timing) with art by David Marquez. We all know Tony Stark is a bit of a poonhound, right? But even he has to worry about making sure he isn't snogging the wrong lady... so what's a guy to do?

Introducing... the Hydra Test. When you absolutely need to be sure your new girlfriend isn't secretly part of a throwback Nazi cell planning to kill you in your sleep. Or mid-coitus. You know. Like they do.

Panel of the Week: 10/28/15

My neverending quest to get up to date with this column continues. It would be going better if I'd do this more than once every two weeks... I mean, that's not a great ratio for a weekly column, right? Anyway, the winner for the week of October 29th comes from Spider-Man 2099 (Vol. 3) #2, written by Peter David, art by Will Sliney.

A robot.

Where the hell did it come from ?

Detroit?

Why Detroit?

No idea. Just a blind guess.

THAT'S why Detroit. Robocop, bitch.

Panel of the Week: 10/21/15

Getting closer and closer... I swear, the idea of a weekly column seemed like a good one at the time! Anyway, the winner for the batch of comics from two weeks ago is a two-page spread that comes from Marvel's Weirdworld #5, written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Mike Del Mundo.

Weirdworld has been a weird book, part of Marvel's still ongoing Secret Wars event, filled with weird ideas and weird images and just, y'know, weirdness. In this final issue the battle for Weirdworld rages on, and it's fought between crystal warriors and magma men and swamp things and dragons and so on and so forth. Which isn't why this panel wins. Nor are the pencils and colors themselves why it wins, although they're great too. The reason this panel wins is that, in the midst of all the assorted aforementioned crazies duking it out, there are a pair of butterflies flying by with a nuke. How the hell does that make sense?

It doesn't.

It's just weird.

Panel of the Week: 10/7/15

Every time I come close to catching up with this damn column, something happens and I fall off and next thing you know I'm almost a month behind. I'll get there one day, I promise. Anyway, the winner for the week of October 7th comes from Avengers #0, an anthology. The story the following image belongs to is a prelude to Uncanny Avengers Vol. 3, and is written by Gerry Duggan and drawn by Ryan Stegman.

I've chosen it not because the art is particularly great, because it isn't, or because there's anything in the dialogue that makes me love it, because there isn't, but because it's representative of the state of the Marvel Universe right now, and why I'm slowly starting to lose interest. What you can see from the above interest is that Captain America is now a retiree; mutants and, obviously, the X-Men, have been pushed aside for the Inhumans, marginalized to such an extent that they are now rendered unable to have children, something that completely invalidates the last three years of X-Men stories; and, oh yeah, Deadpool is an Avenger now, further proving that at this point he's even more overexposed than Wolverine ever was.

No wonder the number of indies I'm reading has spiked lately...

Panel of the Week: 9/30/15

No intro today. The Mets are on and I'm a bit buzzed, so let's get right down to it. The winner for the comics from the week of September 30th is the following panel from DC Comics' Justice League #44, written by Geoff Johns, art by Jason Fabok.

It's a double-page spread of the ongoing battle between the evil god Darkseid and the uber-powerful Anti-Monitor. This battle has been featured here before, but I'm in awe of this image: the power and violence of the fight, the cleanless of the lines, the cowering figures of the Justice League as they are buffeted by the force of the blows traded in the battle. It's pretty great.

Panel of the Week: 9/23/15

Today's post is a bit of a milestone, folks. It's my 101st post in 2015, which means I've officially blogged more this year than any other year previously.

And even with that being the case, I still can't seem to get up on this damn column. Stupid life.

Anyway, the winner for September 3rd's batch of comics is a series of panels from 1872 #03, a miniseries that is part of Marvel's Secret Wars event. The book is written by Gerry Duggan (of Deadpool fame) and drawn by Nik Virella (who I've never heard of). And here are the panels:

That's a Wild Wild West version of Bullseye getting taken out by Red Wolf, and I'm absolutely tickled by it. How it took someone this long from the moment Colin Farrell's Bullseye popped up in that awful Affleck Daredevil movie to do a gag like this is beyond me, but it wins, hands down. From the shock on everyone else's face to the stoicism on Red Wolf's as he drops the punchline, I love it. Maybe if Duggan's Deadpool was this funny it wouldn't be such a chore to slog through...

Panel of the Week: 9/16/15

My trek to get caught up with this damn column continues. Pickings have been slim lately, though, which is why we end up getting a Star Wars winner two installments in a row... it has nothing to do with the thematic connection to this blog in its entirety, I promise. Anyway, the winner for week mentioned above comes from Marvel's Star Wars ongoing, issue #9 of the series, written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Stuart Immonen.

C-3PO and Chewbacca have both had fairly limited presences in the series so far, so it's great to see them start getting featured. And Immonen's art here is just perfect, from the Threepio's stance to how fierce the agitated Chewie is, with his bowcaster. The snippet of Aaron's dialogue in the lines he's written for Goldenrod there show you how well he knows the characters' voices too. Bottom line is that it's a great picture from a great series perfect for Star Wars fans.

Panel of the Week: 9/9/15

One day I'll be closer to caught up with this than two weeks behind, I swear. This will be a brief entry because I've got some stuff on my mind (which might become clear in a post tomorrow if I can turn my thoughts into anything approaching coherent). What I will tell you is that the winner for this installment comes from Star Wars: Journey to the Force Awakens - Shattered Empire. Written by Greg Rucka, the title is a clunker but the art by Marco Checchetto is anything but:

The panel in question is the lightsaber duel, but I had to include the whole page for obvious reasons, part of which is that I love how the action of the Rebel Alliance X-Wing bisects the page and panels. Aside from that, it's just a beautifully drawn image in a book full of great art. This series might just make Checcetto a star.

Panel of the Week: 9/2/15

I'm almost all caught up. So close. Anyway, the winner for September 9th reaches back a bit to the winner from two weeks ago, a panel that one in part because of how it used a sound effect as part of the panel to make the page tell a whole story. This week's winner is very similar:

It comes from Groot #4 (yes, that Groot, obviously), written by Jeff Loveness and drawn by Brian Kessinger. When it was first announced that Groot was getting his own series, I wondered how the hell they'd manage to tell entire issues of story starring a character who's vocabulary is a whopping three words. In this example, the answer to that question is, "very cleverly." Groot has to convince another character that the universe is worth fighting for, and while he only has three words to use, he manages to express all the things he loves about the universe in those three words. It's schlocky, sure, but it's also a beautiful image.

Even if it chock full of replacement characters instead of the real things... but that's a debacle for another time.

Panel of the Week: 8/26/15

Continuing my ride on the "getting caught up" train, here's my second of these in a row. Yesterday I posted the previous week's winner, one that involved, among other things, a creative mix of sound effect and panel placement. The next winner as no such technical merit, but instead was selected just for complete absurdity. It comes from Spider-Woman #10, by writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Natacha Bustos:

Hulk cows.

I'm not even going to explain this one. Or praise it. Or say anything else at all, really. I'll just let the (awesome?) absurdity speak for itself.

Hulk cows.

Panel of the Week: 8/19/15

Yeah, I know; I'm ridiculously behind on these. Don't worry, I plan on getting all caught up this week. Anyway. In the last post in this series, I fairly well excoriated DC for being absolutely ridiculous. So it's no surprise given how life works that they'd turn around and win the title in a good way with a great piece of art:

The full-page piece of awesomeness in question comes from Justice League #43, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Jason Fabok. It's the third chapter of the ongoing Darkseid War storyline, and the image captures the arrival of that titular figure to the battlefield. It's a full-page image of the great embodiment of evil superimposed over panels of his mighty army shaped in the form of a horizontal "boom" the sound the boom tube makes, which signifies his arrival. The entire page, wonderfully drawn by Fabok (who, for me, seems to throw back to the great artists of the 90's like Jim Lee and Michael Turner, with all of their strengths but, so far at least, none of the excessive weaknesses they fell into that signify that era in comic art) conveys the power and horrible majesty of the lord of Apokolips. The art in the entire issue is great, but this panel takes the cake.

Ugh. It pains me to praise DC this much...

Panel of the Week: 8/12/15

Here's a quickie for you this week, because work has been absolutely insane and I'm running on empty. This week's winner, from Red Hood & Arsenal #3 (written by Scott Lobdell, who I used to love, and drawn by Denis Medri) goes a long way to show you just how bad DC can get.

That's the big new villain of this book. Underbelly. SO, you know, he has to be fat then. And gray. And have multiple heads. Even though he's apparently the unkillable embodiment of the concept of organized crime. Or something. It doesn't make a lot of sense. They explode him once, and he comes back, so their solution is to explode him again and hope it takes him longer to pull himself back together this time. Again, stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And totally DC.

Make mine Marvel.

Panel of the Week: 8/5/15

Let's get some Spider-Man love going this week, as the winner this time comes to us from Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #3, written by Dan Slott, with art by Adam Kubert, who is a bit of a legend in the field, going back at least to his stint on Wolverine back in the '90s, if not even farther back than that. It's an alternate reality tale, part of the Secret Wars event, from a world where Peter Parker and Mary Jane are still married and have a daughter. In this issue and specifically in the page from which the panel we're about to see can be found, Annie is asking her mother if her father ever lost any of his battles. This is how MJ responds:

Aside from loving Kubert's pencils (although I always preferred his brother Andy, and even more, their truly legendary father Joe Kubert), which bring a perfect sense of melancholy to Mary Jane's features, I love the juxtaposition of her saying Spidey always wins while visualizing some of his greatest losses. It definitely makes me miss the days these two were married, back before the shitshow that was One More Day. Ugh. I feel an ulcer kicking in just thinking about it. I'll just enjoy the art instead.

Panel of the Week: 7/29/15

Yeah, I know this is really late. Shit happens. There might just be another of these tomorrow to help me get caught up. Or maybe not. Anyway. For the first time, a panel wins this mostly meaningless weekly award based on the dialogue, not the art. Here, I'm sure you'll see what I mean.

The above panel comes from Age of Ultron vs. Marvel Zombies #2, and yes, that's a mouthful. And also yes, that's a Puritan version of the Punisher as he stomps on the head of some zombified Marvel bad guys. The art is by Steve Pugh, and it's a great design, but it's the writing by James Robinson that does it for me. Not only does the scene itself as imagined tickle e pink, but that dialogue, my goodness. It's almost enough to make me want to be a Puritan Punisher for Halloween.

Panel of the Week: 7/22/15

I can't even lie, this week's winner was chosen (late, I admit) out of pure fanboy nostalgia. It comes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 #17, written by Christos Gage (who I have long been a fan of) with the art done by the very talented Rebekah Isaacs, whose art is just gorgeous.

It's the first time in a long time that Buffy, Angel, and Spike are all together in a very long time. What I love most about it, aside from the aforementioned nostalgia, is the detail Isaacs puts into their faces. She really does capture the essence of all the characters, including Willow to a lesser extent in the background. My choice might be further biased by the fact that I met Isaacs at the Special Edition Comic-Con in Manhattan last year, where she signed a really beautiful print for me:

Looks like some things never change; Buffy really will always win with me.

Panel of the Week: 7/15/15

Most comic book fans are familiar with the publishing company Zenescope and their Grimm Fairy Tales series, a series known for it's... well, let's say buoyant female stars. But the series gets a bad rap; yes, the woman are drawn with an amount of sex appeal that doesn't just border on unrealistic absurdity but blows past that border doing 95mph, but the stories can actually be really good, and GFT exemplifies that. It started as an issue-to-issue retelling of different fairy tales and soon grew into its own universe with its own mythology. One of the biggest parts of that was the Wonderland series, a series that spawned multiple sequels and eventually its own ongoing. So it's only fitting that, as Zenescope releases a series of one-shots commemorating their 10th anniversary, that one of those books be Alice in Wonderland (this issue written by Donald Joh, art by Gregbo Watson), which is where this week's winner comes from:

The central conceit of the Wonderland series is that Wonderland is a land of madness that lives to infect our world, and only sacrifices of people like Alice Liddle and her family keep it at bay. In this story, we flashback to a young Alice and a troubled young boy named J.W. who finds his way to Wonderland periodically, coming back again and again because Alice is his only friend. Meanwhile, his life becomes more and more twisted. When he finds that Alice has escaped from Wonderland herself and doesn't remember any of it, he turns into a deranged serial killer. The whole time reading it, I was waiting for the sucker punch I knew was coming, as they always are in a Wonderland one-shot (the ongoing has become a bit more ridiculous than anything else). The sucker punch comes on the last page with the realization that Alice's friend J.W. was a young John Wayne Gacy. Is it silly? Maybe. But it's also a great way to tie the madness of Wonderland to the real world in a concrete fashion. Besides, it's a beautiful page of art. The sadness on the waifish Alice's face as she looks into a mirror, mirrors being gateways to Wonderland, and sees a sheepish, sad vision of her former friend as the readers learn the truth. Plus, it helps that Alice in this image is probably the most realistic a woman in a Zenescope comic ever looks...